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Humans aren’t the only ones to suffer from eating disorders, heart disease, addictions and many other ailments. In Zoobiquity, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and journalist Kathryn Bowers examine the range of diseases and conditions that commonly afflict both people and other animals, including dogs.

Horowitz’s revelation that species-spanning commonalities exist was sparked when she was called to the LA Zoo to help a female Emperor tamarin (an adorable South American monkey) who was experiencing heart failure. She thought that making eye contact and cooing to her tiny patient was the best way to comfort her. Then a vet stepped in and warned her against doing that, telling her she might inadvertently kill the small primate by inducing “capture myopathy.”

Horowitz wasn’t familiar with the term, but quickly learned that this fatal condition can develop when an animal is caught by a predator and experiences a sudden surge of a stress hormone. Unfortunately, this reaction can also be triggered when an animal is held, stared and cooed at by a heart specialist! The eureka moment came when she recognized a connection between capture myopathy and a human cardiac condition, Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (broken-heart syndrome), which can be brought on by a variety of “intense, painful emotions … [that] set off life-threatening physical changes in the heart.” She was surprised to realize that a phenomenon veterinarians had known about for decades hadn’t been identified in humans until 2000. So she set out to see if other human diseases had counterparts in the animal kingdom. She began her inquiry by posing the simple question: “Do animals get [fill in the disease]?”

In collaboration with science journalist Kathryn Bowers, she combed through fascinating case studies and tapped into current research in a variety of fields. Her goal was to “explore the animal-human overlap where it matters most urgently—in the effort to heal our patients.” To label this field of study, Horowitz and Bowers coined the term “zoobiquity,” a combination of zo, the Greek word for “animal,” and ubique, Latin for “everywhere.”

In each chapter, a human disease or disorder is described and then the animal counterpart is presented. They start by looking at fainting, something that one-third of adults have done at least once in their lives. By questioning vets, they found that dogs also experience “vasovagal syncope”—i.e., faint—in response to everyday activities “like barking and jumping … some canines faint when they’re aroused to sudden activity after being at rest.” And like us, some dogs faint when faced with a needle. In both cases, the reason has to do with a “fight or flight” response in which blood pressure rapidly decreases. In turn, the brain “shuts the system down by fainting.”

In the chapter “Grooming Gone Wild,” they look at human self-injurers (including Princess Diana and Colin Farrell) and compare them with dogs who obsessively lick and gnaw at their bodies in almost in trancelike state. It has been found that some compulsive behaviors in dogs, like this one, are genetically based. Whether OCD in humans and the canine equivalent (CCD) are the same disorder is something that has yet to be determined, but Horowitz puts forth a compelling case for a connection.